When Comets Collide
by Dark Satanic Mills
Summary: Couples break up, lovers part with bitter words and torn memories, but they were different. When two comets collide, they burn brighter than ever for a while, but then, inevitably, they crumble into ash.


When Comets Collide

Or, 21

* * *

><p><span>Someone Like You<span>

It's a dark night, but the sulphurous yellow glare of the street lamps is reflected off the low barrier of clouds, painting the town a sickly colour. It's decidedly a town; too noisy, too much concrete and tarmac to be quaint, it lacks the bustle and gravitas of a city. The steady rumble of traffic is still present in the cool air, as incessant as ever, but the blare of horns and shout of voices of the day are missing, so the low thunder seems like silence. It's a dead town, inhabited by the ghosts of could-have beens and would-have-beens and gusts of lonely wind. It's a dark town, its streets trod by cats and drunks and pervaded with the smell of alcohol and dirt. It's a town in interlude, paused between sunrise and sunset while the world turns away and the roar of the freeway plays on and on.

There's a hill on the edge of this stunted little town, covered with a sparse scrub of grass and bushes. It looks out of place next to the concrete necropolis of the town, the city of the dead who haven't yet got round to dying. It doesn't rain often enough for the leaves to ever really turn green, and in the daytime it casts a shadow over the playground at its base. Now, in the night breeze, a swing creaks above the asphalt. There's a boy there, nearly a man really, huddled in on himself against the chill, squeezed into the swing's seat. The harsh lighting from the street makes him look unhealthy, and it glitters off the wetness on his face. It's 2 o'clock in the morning, and no one watches as the boy sits in a rusting swing in an old playground in a godforsaken town, and cries silently into the dark.

Rewind the film and he sits there, swaying in the breeze, occasionally shuffling to adjust the blood flow to his cold limbs. And then he's up, clutching the rusty metal frame for support, and now he's walking backwards jerkily, out of the gate, back along the silent streets, because films don't have sound in rewind, do they? He was walking, now running, sprinting backwards, tears crawling from his cheeks back up his face, retracting into his eyes. He's darting back into a doorway, the door flying open as he approaches, and he's striding backwards like a broken puppet into a bright kitchen, he spins around, his mouth screaming profanities into the silence, each word a blow to the dark haired boy leaning against the counter. Shock crosses his face in reverse, his eyebrows uncrunching and his wide eyes narrowing against his tanned skin as the fair boy flips his hair backwards and makes some throwaway comment, descending quickly into a chair by the table.

Pause, and _play_. The newspaper that just flew upwards into his hands lands back on the table. He mutters something with a reproachful glance under his eyelids to the dark haired boy.

"What was that?" The words have barbs.

The silence is deafening. "Nothing."

"I thought you said something." His voice drips with unspoken accusations.

"Oh no, I didn't say anything."

The lines etched in his face, in both their faces, make it clear this is an old argument. The same words unfold as they have every time, but they wound as deeply as they always have. The same words: _him_ features regularly, neither daring to attach a name to the word. The whole dispute is in italics, the bitter sarcasm and stinging insults interspersed with _I can't believe you!_s and _how could you?_s, peppered with cruel remarks that each knows will hurt, because they know the other boy _so well_.

And then one, the fair haired boy with pale skin, jumps up from his chair and leaves, slamming the door, marching, then sprinting, down the dark, suburban street. It's half past 12. He finds an old playground, dirty and rusting with disuse, and he wedges himself into a swing and regrets not bringing his coat, regrets storming out like that, regrets making his lover _look_ like that. Because god he hates him, hates him with every shred of energy he can muster, but mostly he hates to see his eyes flood with pain and know that he caused it. They met young, he knows that, and he knows he's still young. Perhaps at 21 they were too young to move in together. How could they have known that, when they left high school in a heady daze of love and promises and sex? He'd loved Blaine because he was loud and strong and perfect. He'd loved him for five years, without complaint or regret. But what happens when five years of love sours, when half a decade of tenderness and affection crumbles into bitterness and resentment? Couples break up, lovers part with bitter words and torn memories, but they were different. They were as spectacular as they always were, so they couldn't just leave amicably. They couldn't just move on. When something like that dies, it doesn't just shrivel. It explodes, a vast supernova of hatred and love and revulsion and lust and emotion. When two comets collide, they burn brighter than ever for a while, but then, inevitably, they crumble into ash.

He sits there, swaying in the cold breeze, until the morning floods the sky with pale rose and tender baby blue, and he has to leave because he's cold and stiff and he has to go to work in a few hours.

* * *

><p><span>Rolling In The Deep<span>

There's a point, if you're very unlucky, where life stops. People continue leading their busy little existences, but for you there's nothing left. You carry on getting up in the morning, going to work, eating, sleeping, watching crappy TV, but gradually the friends who came round every day to force a half-smile from your pursed lips come every second day, then once a week, then the excuses pile up and it's once a fortnight. Once a month. Hardly ever. You do everything you always did, but the actions seem superfluous. The earth carries on revolving around the sun, but somehow that seems irrelevant, because it's quite clear that the world is spinning slowly around the pain that fills your consciousness.

Life stopped for Kurt Hummel four years, five months and thirteen days ago.

He's standing, leaning against the dirty wall outside the bar. It's his break, but he only ever uses ten minutes of the half hour he's allotted, just enough time for a cigarette. The June night is damp, muggy, and the air is thick and cloying. A vent in the wall spews out clouds of oil-scented steam from the fryers, the old machinery belching every so often in a spluttering burst. They all come out here, the staff who have the misfortune to work in this dump. It's a watering hole for has-beens, life's losers who can't afford to live in New York but can't bear to leave – Kenny, the wrinkled bag of skin and teeth who turned up twenty years ago and never left, Tara, the woman with the drawn face who sucks on the stub of her fag like it can save her from her grotty motel room and pile of bills, Sue, who rarely speaks but can mix a cocktail in twenty seconds flat. And then there's Kurt, with his high voice roughened by too many cigarettes, his pale skin, his fierce clothes, the lines carved prematurely into his forehead. He drops the fag and crushes it under his foot. The hot ash grinds into the dust.

He knows his way round after four years, so he's already grabbed a glass, opened a lager and half-poured it before his brain registers the voice that's just ordered. Why should he recognize it? He hasn't heard it in, oh, four years, five months and thirteen days. The man sitting at the bar glances around for the first time at the sound of the glass shattering on the tiles. Two pairs of eyes lock, one hazy blue, one molten brown.

It's an unending minute before either of them speaks.

"You." The sound comes from the air between them.

"You." Their gazes are glued, and Blaine doesn't notice the tears prick the corner of his eye as he forgets to blink. He squeezes them shut.

The spell is broken. Very slowly Kurt bends down to pick up the shards of glass which litter the floor like diamonds. The other analogy would be tears, but neither man will allow himself to think that.

"Why are you here?" Kurt demands. Blaine's broken a rule here. They were supposed to never see each other again. That was the unspoken agreement behind their parting words: _I'm going. Go! I'm never coming back. See if I care. I never loved you anyway._

"I came for a drink," he says, because that's the truth. He'd left his job, finally, tired of the suits and meetings and papers. Tired of the deals and the money. By the end he'd wanted to climb onto his desk and just scream, _Is this all you want? Is it always about the paycheck?_ Instead he emailed his resignation, lay in bed for a week with the blinds drawn and the radio turned down low, and then booked a plane ticket. Three days later he was in New York.

He'd regretted it almost immediately. He'd never been to this city before, but every street held a memory. They'd planned this, Kurt and him, lying curled up in a dorm room in college, perched on stools in their favourite coffee place. They'd discussed everything they'd do when they went to that sacred place, _New York_, somewhere they could explore and see and taste and experience and just _be_, without the judgement that was heaped upon them in the rest of their lives. Every time he turned a corner and saw a street vendor, or a row of lanterns in Chinatown, or the gilded doorway to Barneys, a thought crept into his head, past the barriers he'd spent four careful years erecting: _Kurt would like this._

So he'd ducked into some bar in Brooklyn, ready to – what was the phrase? – drown his sorrows. How clichéd. And then he looked up and saw a face as familiar to him as his own. More, in fact, because how much time do you really spend looking at yourself? And how much time do you spend caught in memories of your lover?

"In New York. What are you doing in New York?" He sounds exasperated, but inside he's seething. How dare he? How dare he just turn up and, just like that, make every wall Kurt's built in the last four years tumble down?

"I quit my job. So I came here. Why are you here?"

Kurt gave a short, snide laugh. "I always said you should. They never valued you." He paused. "Me? I didn't want to talk to people. Living in a different state seemed like a decent excuse." He hates the way his voice sounds, snarky and cruel.

"Oh." That's all there is to say to that. "Your voice... it's different."

"Too many cigarettes."

"They'll ruin your singing," Blaine hears himself say, all the while begging his mouth to stop moving. He should leave. He should never see this man again.

"I don't sing anymore," Kurt states, and a faint flush of colour appears on his cheekbones when he realises he's giving away how much Blaine has affected him.

"Oh," Blaine says again, and it seems such an inadequate response to the feeling of his chest tightening around the little ball of muscle and sinew that's beating a hundred miles an hour. He roots around in his pocket and throws a few notes onto the bar for the drink he never got. He stands up stiffly, grabbing a rucksack off the floor. "...bye."

Kurt nods once, and Blaine turns to leave. He reaches the door, brightness spilling into the dark room, and turns for a second. "...want to meet me for a drink later?" he hears a voice asking, and after a minute he realises it's his own.

Kurt stands behind the bar, watching the man he's denied loving for four years, and involuntarily he replies with another little nod. He can't not. Blaine pauses, silhouetted against the doorway, and leaves.

He doesn't ask where they'll meet, or when. He's hardly surprised when Blaine turns up twenty minutes before the end of his shift and sits in the corner, nursing a beer and watching. He sees Kurt on autopilot, filling glasses, shouting orders into the kitchen. He doesn't smile, not once. This makes Blaine's forehead furrow; just seeing Kurt raises a cocktail of bitter emotions in him, but prevalent right now is regret. Kurt has such a pretty smile. He regrets taking that away.

Kurt finishes, pulling a satchel from the back room and walking over to Blaine's table. "So." In silence they exit, the humidity close around their skin. The air's charged, nearly crackling with static electricity.

"There's going to be thunder tonight." Blaine doesn't know why he says it. Kurt glances upwards, but didn't say anything. They carry on walking. By unspoken agreement they walk past the neon signs in the next street they turn into, ignoring the raucous music and crowds of people. They carry on as night falls, walking silently for nearly an hour until Kurt realises he's unconsciously trod the path to his apartment. It's in a dingy alleyway to their left, but he doesn't have to say anything. They could walk past, go somewhere public, somewhere they wouldn't have to address the tension between them.

He'd already made the decision to carry on when he said "I live just down there. Do you want to come up for a drink?"

Blaine was surprised, but he agreed quickly. What was it that was keeping him here? What sort of masochist would stay here, so close to the thing he'd been trying to forget for four years, five months and thirteen days?

They climbed the stairs, three flights, Kurt unlocking the door and pausing to flick the lights on. He glanced around and saw it through Blaine's eyes; the peeling wallpaper, scratched floorboards, lumpy couch scattered with a towel, a pair of jeans, a magazine, a laptop. It wasn't much. It wasn't home, either. He didn't have one of those.

"It's cheap," he offered defensively, aware of Blaine's expression from behind him. He still knew what Blaine was thinking without looking at him. He hadn't anticipated that sort of intimacy. It was too much.

"Ok." He sounded just like he always had. That felt unfair to Kurt, like he was cheating. He wanted to scream. He wanted to kiss him until he couldn't breathe. He wanted to grab his arm and hurt him, and shout _do you see now? This is what I felt back then, when you told me you didn't love me. This is what I've been feeling every fucking day since._

So he stood there instead, in the middle of his train wreck of an apartment. He watched the other man carefully, daring him to speak.

"Why did you go?" Blaine knew it was the wrong thing to say, but it was all he could think. Why did you leave me? Was that all I was worth? One argument? Was I not worth fighting for?

Kurt looked up slowly, facing him. "Why did I go?" he echoed. "I went... I went because I couldn't bear to stay."

He stares Blaine in the eyes, defying him to respond. There was no response to that, so Blaine did the only thing he could think of. He grabbed the back of Kurt's neck with one hand. Their eyes were still locked, messages shooting between them. _I hate you. I will never forgive you. I resent you even standing here. I will be bitter forever._

Kurt's arm snapped up, his hand twisting savagely into the dark hair. Blaine let out a tiny cry, which sounded just like the noise he made years ago when Kurt came inside him. It made Kurt's blood boil. How fucking dare he? He pulls his head towards him, mashing their lips together clumsily. _He just waltzed in here like he didn't break my heart_. The kiss is all teeth and tongues duelling fiercely, each man refusing to submit for one second to the person he hated most in the world. _I want him to know how I felt._ Kurt's ripping open Blaine's shirt, the fabric tearing quietly as he forces it off his shoulders, trapping his arms behind his back. _I need to be in control._ Kurt pushes him backwards with as much force as he can, knocking over a lamp, banging against the table, a chair, a cabinet, stumbling backwards until they slam against a wall. _I want him to hurt like I hurt._ Blaine's arms are free and he pulls off the other shirt, hands scraping up the pale back, fingernails digging into his shoulders. _Make him hurt how I'm still hurting_. Neither man cares now, and four hands scrabble at each others faces and hair and shirts until they're pressed together, skin against familiar skin. _I'm on fire._ It was hot, and everywhere their bodies rubbed there was a crackle of electricity. _We were made for this_.

And then Kurt grabs him, so much stronger than Blaine remembers, and they stand there, locked together in passion and hate and Kurt's strong grip. They stand there for a long moment, pressed together, panting, each waiting for the other to speak. Kurt pulls back roughly and turns away, buttoning up his shirt. "You should go."

Blaine looked around the strange apartment, and looked at the strange man who was nothing and everything like the boy he loved. He pulled his shirt together quickly and left. There wasn't really anything to say.

Blaine sat in his motel room all night. He sat on the edge of the neat bed, not even trying to lie down or sleep. He sat with his eyes closed, reliving his life in a rush of emotion.

His childhood was a milky white-blue memory, a whirl of affection and serenity and long, hot summer days playing in the garden. It was an easy childhood, he knew it. It nearly made up for the next few years, which are a tornado of red and angry purple. He knew he was gay early, having barely switched elementary for high school, and it was like an interesting fact or an unusual observation. He realised it with the same interest he'd had when he realised why the sea was blue, and how his cat made kittens. And so he told his friends with the same abstract, idle comment that he told them he'd got a B on his algebra test. And then his world exploded. He raced through the next years – he never dwelt on those times – until he reached the cool violet of Dalton. It was peaceful, easy, but uneventful.

Then there was a tiny white dot, which expanded to fill his mind. A brilliantly pure emotion that had become his life the day he met Kurt. But the white became dirty at the edges, and the greyness gradually rotted at the edges of love until it took over and his mind went dark. It had been black for nearly four and a half years.

The sky was lightening now. He sits there, staring out of the window, glazed eyes oblivious to the rising dawn.

* * *

><p><span>One and Only<span>

Time's a funny thing. Sometimes it seems more like a figment of your imagination than something we can measure. Something we can set our watches by. Perhaps it's just something we've made up. We humans have this incessant desire to quantify things, to put everything we observe into neat little boxes that we can rubber stamp with a label. We like to define things. We hate to feel like we're not in control.

Take space, for example, the space between you and me, the space between her and him. The space between the earth and the moon, my house and yours, Rio de Janeiro and Ouagadougou. All this space has things in it, even if it's just little things like sea or grass, or huge things like a city. Maybe it's the other way round really, huge things like sea and grass, tiny, insignificant things like cities. Either way, China used to be a long way away from America. It took weeks and weeks of sailing, and before that Americans didn't even know China existed, and it was even further away. Now, I can fly there in hours. It's not so far away anymore.

Time's like that too. Four years, five months and thirteen days can last for longer than eternity, because everyone has a voice in the back of their heads saying that eternity can't really be forever, but with one look the years can shrink to seconds and it's like you were never apart at all, not for a moment. Things have happened, but no time has passed.

And then three days can stretch on and on until you've lost count of the years that must have passed, because it's been such a long time since he left the flat. Left like you told him to. Ordered him to, really. It's been three days, but really it's been decades.

Kurt hasn't been back to the flat. He's offered to lock up the bar for the last two days, and then slept in the dingy office in the back. He's barely spoken for three days, either, just to his boss. It's nice for once, not having to reply to the drunken losers who came to the bar, not having to commiserate or congratulate or even look at anyone. He's never thought of himself as intimidating, but one look can shut up the most determined drunk.

He looks in the mirror in the men's toilets and tries to work out why he's suddenly scary. He knows he's as effeminate as ever, even if he's still wearing the same crumpled clothes he's worn for four days now. He's as pale, as slim, as short. He doesn't speak, he supposes, so the patrons don't hear his high voice, but they all know what he sounds like, anyway. Maybe what puts them off is the steel in his calm gaze, the steel that's somehow _burning_ with so much intensity he can't meet his own gaze in the dirty glass.

He's tired, too. He wakes up screaming every night, sweaty and tangled in the blanket. He's breathing hard, in short, huffing gasps, his heart pounding. Each time he wakes up, he can feel his chest constricted around something in there, and he claws at his front because the ache is so fierce and so old he can feel his organs giving up and exploding inside him. Every night he wakes up like this, at about four o'clock in the morning, and every time he can't remember what he was dreaming about. So he gets up, smooths a crease or two out of his black shirt, and sits curled up on the floor until the bar opens at ten.

The sleep loss is messing with his head, so he makes sure to focus on one thing to clear his thoughts. _I hate Blaine Anderson._ Unfortunately, this makes his mind even more fuzzy, so he gives up and just serves the drinks automatically, his ears telling his hands what to do without bothering his brain. That's why it's a shock, again, when he hears that voice say his name. _Blaine_.

He fixes his expression in place because his mouth is threatening to betray him, but when he looks up it slips anyway, because he's _here_ and he's _close_ and his chest hurts again. "You came back," he says, and his strong, couldn't-give-a-fuck voice comes out as a whisper.

"Yes."

They stand there, and this moment lasts much longer than either of their watches would testify. It does that, time.

"You asked why I left." Kurt's not sure what he's saying, but the words want to come out so he lets them. "I told you it was because I couldn't bear to stay."

"Yes."

"I had to go." His voice is flat, observational.

"You could've come back."

"No."

"Why not?"

Kurt's face has cracked once and for all, and now there's a tear running down his wan cheek. He barely notices his first tear since he sat on a swing in a frosty playground on a cold morning.

"Because you said you didn't love me."

Blaine's voice is barely loud enough to hear. "I lied."

And time really wants to fuck with these two, so it lets the next few seconds stretch on long enough for each man to stare into the eyes of the other and simultaneously realise what each has denied.

"I...I hate you." There's not much conviction in Kurt's voice.

"Yeah, me too."

They're both speaking in the same flat, almost bored tone. To anyone else in the bar, it must look like small talk, about the weather or the food or the superbowl the other week. But noone else can see the fireworks behind their mundanities.

"I can't stand you."

"You sicken me."

"I _hate_ you."

"I _love_ you!"

"Well I love you too!"

And treacherous time does that thing again, the bastard, where it stops and they both absorb the words and the meaning behind the words, and the fact that they're shouting and the whole bar's heard them.

"You... you do?" Blaine says it, but the spark of hope in his voice is echoes in Kurt's eyes, stripped of their glare.

"Always."

It's probably the most imperfect confession of love there ever has been, but that doesn't matter. Nobody's filming them. Nobody's going to record this, or document this, or even care about this. It doesn't matter if there aren't roses or candlight or fireworks, because nobody's going to review them after.

They can't make promises, not yet. They're spectacular, and that means that it will never be simple. It'll never be easy. Passion is a strong emotion, and when it's combined with the sort of unquenchable love that makes volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis: well, it's unstoppable. It's great and terrible and if it has no other outlet it will destroy, begetting jealousy and hate. Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Orpheus and Eurydice: what did they have but tricks and fleeting passion and cowardice? True love isn't to die for the one you love. It's to live and keep living, while your heart breaks over and over again. It's to torture yourself for years and decades and eternities, just in the hope you might see them again, one more time.

Perhaps it was fate who brought them together again. In that case, fate's a bitch. Perhaps it was destiny, if that's not the same thing. Perhaps it was random chance, the one case in a million, the one Kurt and the one Blaine out of a million others who, by chance, meet once more. The one Blaine in a million who came to that specific bar. The one Kurt in a million who didn't just walk past his apartment. Kurt's a cynic, so he thinks it's the latter, but as they sit in a different park in a different town, hands grasped together, watching the sun set, it almost feels like destiny. Almost.

And the sky is ablaze with light, the sun more fiery and terrible and amazing than when they watched it rise. Because love, true love, isn't soft or delicate or pastel coloured. It burns up the sky, and everyone who comes into contact with it sees it's glory, and they have to look away before their eyes burn. It colours the heavens a bright, vibrant shade of fire, and, for a long moment, the world is beautiful as it burns.

* * *

><p><em>The End<em>


End file.
